


Balls to the Wall

by angelkilt



Series: Those New Mormon Superheroes [1]
Category: Iron Man (Comic), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: 50 States Initiative, Civil War (Marvel), Mormonism, Original Character(s), Religious Conflict, Superheroes, plot derived from a single line tony said
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-13
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 15:30:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelkilt/pseuds/angelkilt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent Celeste is the acting Director for the new S.H.I.E.L.D. approved and registered Superhero team the Acolytes. Will contain mostly Original Superheroes and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents but will contain at least one cameo per chapter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balls to the Wall

Between the wreckage of what had once been a state-of-the-art training facility and the mysterious casseroles that kept showing up on her porch, Agent Celeste was starting to see why nobody else had applied for her job.

The mountains were beautiful. The cookie cutter houses were quaint and complete with their perfectly green manicured lawns. Her own residence was practically identical with a few exceptions. Her beige two story home had been equipped with a highly advanced security system built by Stark Industries (to avoid unpleasant incidents), it also was completely free of children and their accompanying messes, toys, paraphernalia, etc. Her home was also without a garden. Not that the lack of garden made much of a difference to anyone, however in the space where such a garden would be a large steel satellite dish had been installed. 

Agent Celeste worked for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (formerly the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate) as the acting director of the approved Super Human team #45 residing in the state of Utah, formerly known as the Acolytes as per the S.H.I.E.L.D. 50 states initiative. She had been in the position for less than a week when the facility had been destroyed. Not by any outside forces, but by two of the Acolytes. The group consisted of ten people (not counting Celeste or any of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents working with the team) all from Utah. The ten had all each registered the day the law passed and had each been deemed capable enough to be set up directly with a hero team without being sent to Camp Hammond for training. A terrible decision in hindsight, but not completely unexpected. They were all over 18 and possessed impressive skill sets which they had each displayed on multiple occasions. 

Smoothing out her suit, the agent paused on her step long enough to grab a container of green jello salad from the ground and then continued into her car. Backing out of her driveway, Celeste grabbed the note taped to the container.

'Romans 12:19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” -Love Nancy your visiting teacher!'

She snorted and returned the note to the passenger seat. The agent pulled on her sunglasses and started scanning the radio for something decent to listen to. The black sedan sailed through the city (Eagle Mountain) where the majority of the agents and members of the Acolytes had been relocated.

Pulling to a stop in front of a gray apartment building, two identically dressed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in work jumpsuits boarded her vehicle. 

"Hey." Agent Mund grinned climbing into the empty front seat. Not waiting for a response he continued, "So is it true that the boss man will be gracing us with his presence this week?" Mund was practically leering at her with the grin that could easily have been borrowed from a sadistic serial killer with a doll obsession. On first glance, one wouldn't consider Mund to be particularly threatening. The man was in his early thirties and stood barely five feet tall. His hair was a short chestnut brown mop that fell into his eyes which were equally brown. Mund was small but very capable of taking people out. Under the work suit, Mund was ripped, which aided him in two favorite activities: martial arts and stripping.

"UGH. NO. NOT OKAY." Agent Brown groaned from the backseat. Her long thin limbs were sprawled out across both seats and she held her arms over her head in an attempt to block out the sun. "The lab is a complete wreck." Brown was the head of the R&D department of the Acolytes project and was also incapable of keeping anything neat. Brown's long black hair was pulled into a neat pony tail with a few wayward strands falling in front of her thick glasses. 

"The lab is a complete wreck? Have you seen the arena lately? No you haven't. Because it's gone." Mund retorted turning in his seat to glare at Brown. Mund was in charge of keeping the team fit in between missions and making sure they were prepared for any kind of physical activity that they might encounter in the field. "But do you see me complaining?"

"Technically, you're complaining right now-"

"No, you don't." 

Celeste could already feel the day's headache coming on and they still had thirty more miles to go before they reached HQ. "That information is confidential and of course you're not worried about the facility because if anyone's going to get fired, it will be." 

A moment of silence filled the sedan for a glorious ten seconds. "So what you're saying is that someone with the ability to fire you is coming to visit." Mund grinned at her victoriously while Brown continued to groan. "You know, they say that Director Stark doesn't own any piece of clothing less than 500 dollars. Do you think we could somehow convince him to take off his shoes? I wanna know what a 500 dollar sock looks like. Or would it be 250 a sock? I can't even imagine a 1k pair of socks. They would have to have conflict dia- Hey what's this?" Mund lifted the container by his feet into his lap.

"Ooh, hand it back here."

Mund handed the jello back to Brown who proceeded to drink from the Tupperware. He kept the note and stared at it in fascination while Celeste made a disgusted face into the rear-view mirror.

"How can you eat that crap?" Brown merely shrugged in response. "You better not get that shit on my seats."

"Holy shit." Mund whispered in awe still staring at the note. "Do you know what this is?!" His eyes were wide and filled with a mixture of glee and terror.

"A house wife with too much time on her hands?" Celeste grunted.

"A treasure map?" Brown guessed.

"It's a dig on the boss, on all of us. It says right here 'do not avenge'! This could be a threat, this could be terrorism!" Mund started to work himself up into a manic state, thinking of all the wonderful possibilities.

"You don't generally threaten people you address as beloved and terrorists don't sign their names, idiot." Celeste sighed pulling into the underground parking lot situated beneath their head quarters.

"It totally is a dig though." Brown added from the backseat.

"THOSE BASTARDS!" Mund yelled in mock outrage jumping out of the car.

The three split up there. HQ was divided into three different buildings. There was the five story office and command center where meetings were held and important paperwork was filed (where Celeste's office was located), the R&D building which was one floor of laboratories and science geeks and one floor containing a medical bay and doctor geeks, and the training facility (aka the arena) which was at the moment mostly rubble and some pitched orange tents where construction workers were redesigning the building.  
Agent Celeste let out a long sigh as the elevator doors closed behind her. She didn't dislike her friends or being with them... she just didn't like them. The hum of the elevator was enough to lull her back into her gloomy thoughts. If it was true that the Director was doing a tour through the states then he would eventually show up at the Eagle Mountain base. Celeste had brushed that possibility off as a paranoid rumor, after all the Director was busy fighting a war in New York. 

The elevator dinged as it opened up onto the fifth floor. Celeste walked into the hallway and passes the closed doors of her two 'assistants' heading straight for her office. As she neared, the unmistakeable sound of high pitched female giggling danced around the hallway like a bird mating call. Celeste reached the opening and was unsurprised by the sight of her new secretary listening intently to a well dressed man. His back was turned to as he leaned over the secretary's desk. Neither of them noticed her arrival, they were much to busy talking to each other in hushed tones and sharing meaningful glances.

Deciding it was much too early in the morning to properly give a shit about proper work place conduct, Celeste silently walked passed them and entered her office. She slammed the door behind her with a smirk hoping to rain on the couple's parade. 

Safely in her office, Celeste allowed herself to relax a bit. She sank into her desk chair and pulled up her stumble account on the internet. It was still early and there really wasn't much she could do until the rest of the team filled in. 

A knock interrupted her perusal of nifty office gadgets. She quickly bookmarked one called a moody nest before answering. "Yes?"

She didn't look up, expecting her secretary to stumble in apologetically with some excuse about having to give her boyfriend a ride. 

"You really need to work on how you greet people." The matter of fact tone was laced with a hint of mocking and sarcasm. It was instantly recognizable and made the unsuspecting agent's stomach drop.

Celeste closed out of her browser and stood from her desk quickly. "Director Stark, I wasn't expecting you." She countered awkwardly walking forward to shake his hand. Tony Stark in all of his glory stood in Celeste's office wearing dark brown slacks and a white button up with his hair gelled to perfection. Even in a three piece suit, Celeste felt under dressed standing in his presence.

"It's Tony, and you don't look surprised." 

"This is just how my face always looks." 

"Botox?"

"No, I've just never been able to open my eyes any wider than this."

"Huh." Tony took her hand and pulled himself into her personal space staring intently into her eyes. After exactly thirty three seconds of intense studying, he smiled absently at her and took an appropriate step back.

Celeste felt mildly violated and horrified. It was not going to be a good day.

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously though in the Stuart Moore prose adaptation of Civil War Tony actually says 'those new Mormon heroes in Utah.' Then I just couldn't not do this.
> 
> I apologize in advance.


End file.
